A Suite of Homes Representing the U.S. Housing Stock

Published

December 1, 2003

Author(s)

Andrew K. Persily, Dennis D. Leber

Abstract

In order to facilitate nationwide analysis of ventilation and indoor air quality issues in residential buildings, a set of homes has been defined to represent the housing stock of the United States. This so-called suite of homes is based on two residential housing surveys, the U.S. Department of Energy Residential Energy Consumptions Survey (RECS) and the U.S. Census Bureau American Housing Survey (AHS). The RECS dataset includes about 6 000 U.S. residences and the AHS covers about 60 000, and are intended to periodically assess various characteristics of the U.S. housing stock. Based on these datasets, about 175 buildings were defined that represent approximately 75 % of the U.S. housing stock. These buildings are grouped into four categories: detached, attached (e.g. row houses), manufactured homes and apartment buildings. This paper describes the RECS and AHS datasets and how they were used to define this suite of homes. The characteristics of the 175 buildings themselves are then described and how well they represent different building features. Among the key characteristics addressed in defining these homes is airtightness (using age as a surrogate), floor area, foundation type and presence of a garage. As an extension of this effort, these homes will be setup in the multizone airflow model CONTAMW and make them available for analyzes of residential ventilation, energy and indoor air quality issues.

Proceedings Title

AIVC Conference, Proceedings | 24th | 24th AIVC Conference : Ventilation, Humidity Control, and Engergy

Conference Dates

October 12-14, 2003

Conference Title

Air Infiltration and Ventilation Centre

Pub Type

Conferences

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Keywords

database, modeling, residential, ventilation

Citation

Persily, A. and Leber, D. (2003), A Suite of Homes Representing the U.S. Housing Stock, AIVC Conference, Proceedings | 24th | 24th AIVC Conference : Ventilation, Humidity Control, and Engergy, [online], https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=860935 (Accessed April 16, 2024)